


23

by Fueledbychelle



Category: Unspecified Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 20:24:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14292756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fueledbychelle/pseuds/Fueledbychelle
Summary: A short Charmie fic based on the song "23" by Jimmy Eat World.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written from Timmy's POV

**23; Part One**

White knuckles wrap around the steering wheel, like I’ve got this tight grip on my entire life, so it doesn’t slip through the cracks between my fingers. The road in front of me warps and blurs, tears brim and spill from my eyes. It feels like pain-white, hot, liquid pain, sitting at the base of my spine screaming, “I’m coming and there’s nothing you can do about it.” I hadn’t realized I was even crying until the traffic lights at the end of the street blended together, and I sat at the intersection for almost a minute before I realized it was green. I shouldn’t be driving, not after the amount of liquor I’ve consumed, but I wasn’t going to get in the car with Armie. Not after tonight.

All of this had been for him—someone who made me feel like I should say I was sorry for loving him.

I should have stayed with Pauline  
I shouldn’t have gotten into the car  
I shouldn’t have said anything  
  
I try to wipe the evidence from my face, an attempt to sever off this part of me that believed in the possibility of a life together, the possibility of love. The kind of love that existed before I was aware that someone could wake up and feel differently about me in their heart and in their bones, and that the pain I feel is unwarranted.  I convince myself, with every ragged breath and sob that, if this is what it feels like to love him, I don’t want any part of it.       

I replay the scenario in my head, the moment I left the party, when I managed a smile that felt like the biggest lie I had ever told, when I held my breath, in case he was going to call me out on it. But he didn’t. He wrapped his arms around me, like his limbs could provide more comfort than the words coming out of his mouth. In reality they felt more like an ice-cold vice, forcing me to accept the fact that I’ll never be more than the best friend he’s ever had.

At the stroke of midnight, I turned 23 and I wanted to collect the words he spoke about the way he felt about me in my hands, and wring them out like rain, until they sounded less like, “You’re my best friend,” and more like, “I love you too.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**23: Part Two**

I continuously blame alcohol for the things I’m too afraid to take responsibility for. Tonight, is no different. I pre-game the pre-game in hopes that in a few hours the pale brown liquid that exists in the confines of numerous shot glasses will ignite in my veins and send the world into a frenzy of spinning lights and memories locked away in my subconscious, only appearing in my conscious memory in fragments asthe alcohol makes it’s brutal journey back up through my esophagus and god willing, into the toilet early tomorrow morning.  I let alcohol take the wheel, because I have been holding on to this moment for too long. If I hold it any longer it’s going to melt in my hands, boiling over until I’m left with nothing but the memory of knowing what it was like to give a fuck about someone other than myself. Tonight, is the night when I stop living in my regrets.

Armie Hammer is my biggest regret. I torture myself with the dreams that eat away at me. What I wouldn’t give for the conscious experience of our lips meeting and parting, legs tangled together, desperate to feel every inch of him on my skin, but this time not in front of a camera. I don’t want to be Elio, I want to be me, and I want him to be him. I’m plagued by the illusion that he knows the hidden spots on my body that turn me on and leave me devastated when he stops touching me. Reality drags me out of this hallucination and I feel nothing but the loneliness that intensifies with every minute I’m in love with him. I’m bitter, to say the least. I wanted friendship before romance, and I suppose that in itself was my unavoidable downfall into my present state of being. I had convinced myself long ago that a friendship with someone whose heart is as gold as his would open the door to inherent good, and reciprocated love. And instead, I’ve come away with unrequited love and someone who would do anything for me but choose to return it. “ _I’m better than this_ ,” I tell myself every time I climb out of his cold embrace. But am I better than this?  I shove that doubt down my throat everyday as I willingly go to the ends of the earth for him.

I wish at a younger age I would have listened to the wisdom of those who have been in love far longer than I ever had. It could have saved me the heartbreak. He eats away at me, because there isn’t a thing that he doesn’t know about me, not a single inch of my life that is private other than the gnawing notion of my undying love for him. I’ve swallowed my feelings for the last 2 years. I’ve held on tight to the idea that maybe, just maybe, the slightest part of him would feel the same. I’ve weighed the pros and cons of our friendship, of my life with and without him. This is where it ends. This is where it has to end. If not, I will waste my life away waiting for him to come around.     

23 is the magic number tonight. Everyone loves a good birthday party and the free shots that follow. And I, for one, like knowing that at least someone in this bar gives a shit about me. I’ve been alive for 23 years, yet I still have trouble existing in a crowded bar with people who are far more social and far less self-conscious than I am. Perhaps this is why I turn to alcohol in my time of need, to keep the dead air between me and everyone else at bay. It cracks me open, warms me up. I laugh at jokes that probably aren’t funny, I say things that sometimes I’m too afraid to say when I’m sober, and I make up for the things that I still lack.  My sister takes on the role of best friend tonight and elbows her way into two empty bar seats while we wait for the definitely late arrival of Armie to my impromptu birthday party.

“You know, maybe you should slow down” Pauline grabs a hold of my wrist, stopping me from putting the glass to my lips. I glare at her, my brain trying to keep up with her words and the alcohol, “that’s your third jack and coke and we just got here.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I shake my head, forcefully jerking my arm away from her, causing the drink to topple out of the glass and onto the floor, “smooooooth.”

I set the empty glass on the bar letting out a frustrated sigh. Before I can motion towards the bartender for a refill, I’m greeted by the very warm and familiar hands of Armie, on my shoulders, shaking me.

“Happy Birthday Timmy!” his lips are close to my ear as he speaks, and I get up to face him, as he holds his arms out to hug me, “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world!”

I’ve looked at him for what feels like every day for the past 3 years, and I’ve grown accustomed to his presence in my life. I knew I wanted to be his best friend by the way he laughed at my jokes, the way he spoke so eloquently about acting and love and life. He laughs with his entire body, like his sense of humor was built on a fault line. They have him bent over, clutching at his stomach, gasping for air, just waiting for the tears to subside from the corners of his eyes. He’s genuinely amused and interested when he laughs. And even after all this time, he still has yet to give me a moment of insincerity.

I could fill a poorly written novel with the cliché things I think about him. But he’s not going to feel the same because I’m obsessed with how he talks about our on-screen love story. He’s not going to love me back because I’m fixated on his smile or the warmth that radiates off of him. Christ, the thought alone of verbalizing it makes me need at least 4 more shots of liquid courage.

“Let me buy you a drink,” he insists.

I should stop drinking. I say it over and over again, as each shot passes my lips. But with every ounce of alcohol that I consume, comes the courage for the inevitable moment where I tell him that I’m tired of waiting for him to come around and that I’m tired of acting like nothing is wrong when everything is wrong with the way our friendship exists. I want to stop drinking.

But he puts the drink in my hand.

Love is hell, and I’m running straight into the flames.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**23: Part Three**

Our decisions and our beliefs carry the weight that we give them. Hold that weight for a few seconds and nothing happens. Hold it for a few hours and your arm begins to cramp up. Hold it for a few days and your muscles become numb.  At some point, the weight of these things becomes impossible to hold. We’re forced to let go, to make these decisions final, and to live with them. The weight of how I feel about him has left my muscles atrophied and numb. It’s clouded my vision, caused me to let the wrong ones in and the right ones go, turned me into this person who would rather be unhappy waiting for him than to tell him how I feel and let it go. I need to let it go.

I lick my lips hundreds of times a day thinking about Armie and I. I run my tongue over them one too many times until they bleed, and I’m left frequenting the walgreens like someone who has spent the last three months constantly battling the wintery air of a ski slope. I don’t even see the outside anymore. I can’t see anything but him and I.

And here I am, almost 5 drinks deep and I can’t seem to keep my mind off of him, even though it makes the room shake and the small bar TVs climb the walls. I lick my lips every time he puts the bottle to his mouth until the alcohol of my drinks make my lips burn. Even now, no one has me like he does. The alcohol makes it hurt a lot less when I look at him. He just keeps repeating the same vicious cycle. He places a glass in my hand full of a curious liquid. Sometimes it’s red, sometimes it’s brown, and sometimes it’s no color at all. But I don’t question it, just like I’ve never questioned him, and I put it to my mouth, emptying it. Hundreds of thousands of receptors go off in my brain like tiny fireworks that scream how badly this is going to end, but Armie snatches the empty glass from my hands only to replace it with another. And so it goes…

Tomorrow I will wake up from a hangover and photographs and videos on my phone and Instagram that remind me of all of the terrible, and fun, decisions I make tonight. I cross my fingers that maybe, just maybe, I’ll wake up to him in my bed. I’ve successfully convinced him to meet me in the middle of the dance floor and bust out the same terrible “Love my Way” dance moves from filming. He’s still self-conscious about his dance moves, and I’m fucking here for it.

“Timmy,” Pauline wraps her fingers around my bicep and pulls me away from Armie, and I try to push her hands off of me as we get further and further away from him.

“Hey” I yell, our faces inches away from each other, “what the fuck are you doing?”

“I know you love him, but I am so tired of watching him do this to you. This is just a game to him, T. And we both know it. He’s not into you like that. He doesn’t look at you like he looks at her. I’m not going to let you get hurt, not by him, because you don’t want to lose him. You’re going to make an ass out of yourself because you’re drunk and he’s not going to care. He’s not coming around, Timmy. And frankly, it’s not worth your time.” She tells me, shaking her head, trying to reason with me.

“Don’t!” I push her off of me, finally, yanking my arm out of her grasp and making my way back towards Armie. I turn towards her, “You don’t know what it feels like to sit around and wait. I’m done waiting.”

I don’t know exactly what she sees in him that I’m missing. Maybe I’m ignoring all of the things that I don’t want to see, like how many times he’s checked his phone tonight, how many phone calls he’s taken from Liz, or how many times he’s checked out a girl walking past us while we’ve been dancing, or how many times he hasn’t looked at me the way he looks at her. 

“I need some air,” I tell him, when I get back to him, over the noise, and he nods towards the door.

“And a cigarette” he follows close behind me, through the crowd. My shoulder opens the exit door in the back of the bar and cold air bites at the sweat on the back of my neck. I pull a pack of cigarettes out of my back pocket and offer one to him.

“Having fun?” he raises an eyebrow, clamping a hand down on my shoulder, and I pull away from him, “hey, you alright?”

“I need to talk to you,” I rub a hand over the back of my neck, licking my lips. He holds his hands up in front of him like he’s done something wrong, “I don’t know how,”

“Hey, Timmy, it’s just us.” He puts his hands on my shoulders again, “what’s going on?”

“I don’t want to be friends,” I frown, eyes shifting to the ground, “I know it’s a shot in the dark, but I can’t stop thinking about Italy. I can’t stop thinking about you. It’s been three years, spending time with you, and I just keep thinking about the 8 takes of that last kiss. I can’t shake it. I want to be with you.”

It’s amazing what you focus on when the world around you is imploding. My eyes move to the glowing neon lights above the bar’s fire escape, hanging slightly crooked on the wall. From the position I was in, I could see it perfectly. Strange things happen when you stare at something long enough. The edges blurred out, the room around me reverberated with the colors humming on the surface. Every wide flash at color vibrated at a different pitch, wistful wavering high notes for the neon pink letters, deep reasoning low tones for the flickering blue beneath. I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe, I didn’t focus on anything but that god damned sign until I felt his hands leave my shoulders. For as long as I live, I hope I never come here again.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**23: Part Four**

Everything has always existed as black or white; hot or cold. I don’t know how to be anything other than extreme. I’m boiling water or ice, asleep for 14 hours or a awake for 72. I take a shot or down the bottle. I either desire unlimited amounts of affection or to be alone forever. I want to feel everything or nothing at all, and if I want love, it’s all or nothing. I’ve never known anything but that.  I don’t understand gray, I never have. Yet here I am, expected to exist as something between being a best friend and something more, because of what I have said. It’s impossible. I am impossible.

Sometimes I wonder how long it would take for his eyes to burn right through me when he looks at me. I’ve spoken words he never thought he’d ever hear come out of my mouth, and I can feel the heat creeping up my spine with every passing moment his eyes are on mine, igniting my nerves along the way. It sends heat waves up through my chest and neck and all I can think about is if he looks at me too long, will I stop looking like the person he knows me as? Kind of like when you say a word over and over again and it stops sounding like a word. Will I look less desperate the longer he looks at me? Will I change his perception of me? How long before this begins to hurt?

I said I needed air, but in reality, I needed to prove Pauline wrong. What she said hurt in a subtle way. They shifted my heart in its cage and made me want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything. But as the words came out of my mouth, I wondered why I hadn’t told him before. The answer is simple.

Because maybe, just maybe, I had never had a reason to think that he’d ever say the words back to me.

She was right.

“You’re my best friend” He speaks up, shifting his weight to his heels, his shoulders up at his ears. He crosses his arms over his chest like he’s closing himself off to whatever it is I have to say now. He’s made up his mind, twice now. Maybe if he says it over and over again I’ll get the hint and take it back.

“I’ve had quite a lot to drink.” I mumble to myself as I chew on the side of my thumb.

This is the part where I try to convince myself that there is a reason I have said it, just to give me an excuse for later on when I realize how much I regret it. But it’s not the alcohol, regardless of the fact that I tried to drink the entire bar under the table. No. I will not associate this feeling to that. Somehow this moment has made me feel so uncomfortable and so wrong in a split second. This is on him and I, not the alcohol.

“No.” I shake my head.

 “No, what?” he asks, taking a step towards me, “no we’re not friends?”

 “No. I’m not going to live in my regret. And I am not going to apologize” I tell him, glaring at him, “not for loving you.”

“You’re drunk, Timmy,” He tells me. he smiles, the corners of his lips turning up, almost genuinely. Oh but I’ve seen people smile out of pity before. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last. I narrow my eyes at him, as he makes another step towards me, trying to make me feel better, and in response I take a few steps back.

“Timmy,” He says, his voice soft as he tries to console me.

“I don’t want to wait around for something good to happen.” I yell at him, smacking his hands away from me, “No one else will ever know me like you do, and I’ve been waiting for the right time for you to finally come around. You’re never going to come around.”

“This isn’t fair,” he argues, shaking his head, “what did you expect me to say? You pull me out here to tell me you love me, on your birthday? That’s bullshit. You know I have a family. What the fuck, man? Go home, sleep on it, let’s just talk about it tomorrow.”

“What the fuck is the difference between then and now?” I realize I have no control over my words as they escape my mouth. I sound angry, hurt, upset, “You can tell me you don’t feel the same way when I’m sober?”

“You told me you’re in love with me.” he says, his voice quiet, “Don’t I have the right to think it over? To not automatically want to say it back because of what you actually mean to me? But you expect me to write you off.”

“You told I’m your best friend.” I mumble, feeling the familiar burning sensation of tears in my eyes.

“You are,” he reiterates, “so don’t think for a second that I don’t care about you. I don’t want to fight about this tonight. This is your birthday, not a night where you are pissed off at me because I don’t say what you want me to say in a parking lot.”

He digs around in his back pocket and pulls out a small package, offering it to me, with an apologetic tone, “Happy Birthday, Timmy.”

I grab the package from his hand, and take a few steps backwards, remembering the look on his face when I told him I loved him. It’s not going to happen again. I try and convince myself of one simple thing as I make my way back into the club.

I won’t always love what I’ll never have.

 


	5. Chapter 5

**23: Part Five**

There’s a moment when you wake up in the morning where, for the first time, in maybe a long time, you’re just happy to be alive. You are happy to have woken up, to begin breathing, to feel the sun that has slipped past the blinds on your skin. For that split second, we forget that the weight of the problems we struggle to carry makes our arms ache and our hearts heavy. Instead, we convince ourselves that maybe it is just gravity that’s been getting us down. We detach ourselves, for that split second, from our decisions. And then we exhale, and all of the things that we carry with us come rushing back, and for the rest of the day, we can’t forget.

I make my way back into the club because it’s the only logical way to get away from Armie, just for a few minutes anyways. I push through the sea of people. I’m too drunk to be nice, to say excuse me as I shove my body towards familiar faces. I come into contact with an old friend, Ansel, who is supposed to be the key master for this party. The key master is in charge of guarding the keys from those who are too drunk to drive. The ultimate designated driver.  He must have gotten the memo from the look on my face that, although I was in no shape to drive home, I was also in no shape to stay here. He doesn’t even ask to see me walk a straight line when I demand my keys.

“Where are you going?” Pauline is in front of me again, and I begin to assume that she’s only there when I don’t need her to be, to criticize my decisions.

“Home.” I tell her, rolling my eyes. I want to push past her, to be able to walk away without her asking any questions, but she knows me almost as well as I know myself.

“You told him, didn’t you?” She doesn’t even have to hear my response before she’s making her way towards the back door. I follow her, grabbing her arm in an attempt to stop her warpath.

“No one treats you like this,” She mutters as she rips her arm out of my grasp, “and you’re not driving anywhere, unless you want to kill yourself.”

She shoves open the back door, scanning the empty parking lot for Armie. She catches a glimpse of him, leaning against a car with his phone to his ear, mumbling something.

“Hey,” I call out to her. She stops walking and turns around to look at me. I think it’s the first time she’s looked at me since I got back inside. She’s so worried about making sure Armie knows exactly what she thinks about him that she hasn’t taken a second to think about how it makes me feel, “what are you even going to say to him?”

“It doesn’t matter” She shrugs at me, reaching out to push the hair out of my face “look at you.”

“I’m going home,” I tell her, making up my mind, “Happy fucking birthday to me.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

**23: Part 6**

I regret every ounce of alcohol I consumed last night when I wake up to the room still spinning. The glowing green numbers of my alarm clock climb the walls as I try and focus on what time it is. 9am. The rest of the world is awake and going about their day, and I still have the taste of rum in my mouth. The mind-numbing pain stemming from the obnoxiously loud ringing of said alarm clock makes me wonder if this is what the end of the world feels like. Probably. My brain screams for me to go back to sleep, so that in a few hours, I can wake up and throw up the rest of the bad decisions I made last night. I fall back into an alcohol induced deep sleep until the light fights its way through my blinds, and I’m woken up to the sound of paper being ripped into tiny shreds.

The sound could have been anything; a fire alarm, someone sneezing, iced tea being stirred. My reaction would have been the same. It’s amazing how quickly things can go from bad to worse. I open my eyes and thank god that the room has righted itself, until I realize that the only thing my body wants is to rid itself of all of the alcohol. Bile fights up through my esophagus, and I wage a small war with my bed sheets as I struggle to scramble from my bed to my bathroom without heaving all over my carpeting. I make it, hands over my mouth, ready to unleash some kind of shit storm of alcohol vomit, and I can just tell this is going to burn. It does; feels like fire has ignited my throat and nose, and all I can do is let it happen.

“Better out than in,” Pauline leans against the doorframe to the bathroom. Only she would get her kicks from watching me puke my brains out, “Looks like you won’t be drinking rum anymore.”

I wait until the dry heaves subside, before I collapse on the floor, the cool linoleum against my cheek, spent.

“You look like shit, Tim.” She comments.

“Thanks.” I comment sarcastically, rolling onto my side towards her. My eyes move from her face to the small box in her hands.

 “What are you doing?” my voice reaches out from my scratchy throat as I watch a small metallic piece of paper fall from her hands to the floor, “Don’t.”

I try to sit up, and instantly regret my decisions. As soon as my head raises up no more than half a foot off of the floor, I’m met with a mind splitting headache. I try to calculate how many aspirin I need to get rid of this headache versus how many aspirin can I take before I die.

She opens the package right in front of me. It feels like time is moving in slow motion as each piece of paper flutters to the floor. I don’t remember her drinking last night, but my god, it’s like she’s drunk as well, thinking that any of this is okay. I make some kind of an inhumane noise, something between a groan and a growl, and while my bark is way bigger than my bite, she gets the message loud and clear, stopping her motions.

 “Just get out,” my voice shakes with anger. I sink my face back onto the floor and exhale.

“Still just trying to help” she says, putting the box on the ground in front of me, “you might not remember last night, but I do.”

“You’re help is noted and appreciated, but that present is mine.” I groan.

“There’s coffee downstairs whenever you get up off of the floor” she replies.

I sit up slowly, after she leaves, taking the small box between my hands. I don’t even have the slightest idea what’s in it, but somehow I feel like it’s just going to spur a painful combination of love and hate. I take a shower, before sitting on the edge of my bed, tearing the rest of the wrapping paper off of the box, and open it.

Inside is a gold bracelet, with three tiny flat gold plates on the chain that read, “If not now, when?” It knocks the wind out of me because he knows. Because he knew, even before I said anything. That fucking bastard. I put it back in the box and tuck the box under my pillow, before making my way downstairs into the kitchen, filling a mug full of coffee.

Everyone else is silent, when I enter the room. My parents always show up for my birthday, but this year feels differently. They don’t automatically bombard me with “happy birthdays.” I assume my sister informed them of my terrible hangover and the birthday party from hell. My mom is the first person to speak, and she looks at me, sympathetically.

“You’ll fall in love again, sweetie” she says, as she grabs one of my hands, “I just know it.”

I realize now, a cup of terribly cold day-old coffee in my hands, that this is the saddest I will ever be. What is it that makes us so mortal that at any given moment you can feel so alone and so out of place and so guilty? That lump in our throats, it has no function other than to make our voices shake in the face of those who upset us. The heat rises from my chest to my face and I can feel my heartbeat reverberating in my ears and for a second I’m more worried that everyone else can heart my heart skipping to this obnoxiously frantic beat that I don’t even think about the tears in my eyes. I’m upset and I feel so alone and the ringing in my ears drowns out the noise of the rest of the world. I’m not the only one who has ever indulged in this, and I won’t be the last. But my god, I would give anything never to feel this way again.

I wanted this.

That’s the bitter truth to all of our struggles. I wanted to grow up, I wanted to be in love. It isn’t easy, nothing that is worth it is every easy, and this is what I wanted. It is what it is. This is how it plays out. I can’t take it back, even if I wanted to. I can’t get back time that I so wisely invested long ago. I don’t want to. That’s where the dissonance is. Even with the pain, I’m not angry. I don’t wallow in, “this isn’t fair” because it’s not productive. It’s driven by love. Love for myself. Love for future love, for the right kind of love, that fits and feels like it’s going to last forever.

“I don’t want to be in love with anyone else” I frown, “I need to go see him.”

 “I’ll drive you” my sister speaks up.

“I’ll be back in time for us to celebrate,” I tell my parents, and they both nod. It’s naive of me to assume that I’m the only person who has ever been in this situation, but by the look on my parents faces, they’ve been here before too, long ago.

 I call Armie, hoping he’s around.

“Timmy, hey,” he sounds relieved to hear my voice, "I'm glad you're okay"

“We need to talk about last night” I tell him, “I’m coming over.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

**23: Part 7**

We so often deposit our faith in fear. Even as young adults, there are things that still scare us. And we let our faith turn fiction into fact. We are afraid of the horror of symmetry, and the beauty of non-conformity. We are afraid of the dark, afraid of the things that go ‘bump’ in the night. We are afraid of the uncertainty of what happens to us after we die. And we most certainly invest our fear in making decisions that could change our lives. The uncertainty of the outcome fuels the fire of fear. But uncertainty is something that everyone goes through. It’s something that proves that we were here, and that we are alive, and that we have the capability of deciding the path of our own future. We should deposit our faith in overcoming that fear.

I have deposited my fear in unrequited love. I pace the front stairs of Armie’s house. I can’t prove that I’ve ever been in love before, but despite that, I wanted to grow old with him, and it scares the shit out of me.

I hold the bracelet he gave me in the palm of my hand, closing my fingers around it so tightly that I’m sure the message on the pendant is embedded in my flesh. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, he knew, even before I said anything last night. I drop it into my pocket before he comes to the door. When he finally opens the door, a relieved look washes over his face, and he instantaneously opens his arms out for a friendly hug, which I graciously accept.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he mumbles into my shoulder, his arms tightening around me, “I was worried about you.”

“yeah, well I guess I probably shouldn’t have had that much to drink.” I reply, chuckling. I follow him inside, into his living room and I take a seat on his couch. It doesn’t occur to me until now how much time I’ve actually spent with him in this exact place, waiting between press, spending time with his family.

“I meant what I said last night,” I tell him, stretching my arms above my head, exhaling loudly. When a prolonged silence falls between us, we finally lock eyes.

“I’ve known what I would say for awhile,” his confession makes me almost uncomfortable. I feel a wave of nausea wash over me. Those words leave his mouth like he’s thought about the possibility of him and I. While my heart threatens to swell and burst out of my chest over that thought, he knows it’s something that he doesn’t want. And how can I want something so much that will never happen? How will I be able to sit here in front of him, listening to the words leave his mouth, and not want to shove them back down his throat.

“We’re not going to be okay after this,” I interrupt him, chewing on my bottom lip, “you know that, right?”

“It’s going to change us either way,” he lets out a sigh, “I can’t give you what you want. I care about you, because you’re my best friend. But things changed in Italy for you. You feel differently. And I don’t. Listen, I gave you that bracelet for a reason. Because I knew at some point you’d get to a point where you figure out what and who you want. And I wanted you to know that above all else, you should never be afraid to act on your decisions. You should never hold yourself back from doing something you think is right. Whether or not the outcome is favorable is not what’s important. What’s important is that you live in the moment, and you make it count. You think that your life is only going to be worth something if I’m in love with you. It’s not. This is going to hurt you either way. And I hate that. I do love you, as a brother, as a best friend.”

I cover my face with my hands. This is what it feels like to be hurt by someone you love. And it hurts a lot worse than I thought it was going to. He doesn’t sugar coat it, and at some point, someday, I’ll probably thank him for it. But right now it stings, like a fresh cut over a recently healed wound, like the time my dad backhanded me for saying “fuck” in front of my baby sister when I was 10.

“You’re going to be okay, Timmy” He tells me, and the look on his face tells me he means it. I pull myself out of his grasp and head for the door. It feels like I’m being torn apart from the inside out and nothing is ever going to be good again. We’re not going to be the same again, and perhaps we won’t even be as good of friends after this. Only time will tell. But I suspect that we will go back to our respective lives, and eventually I’ll see him again, and we’ll smile and catch up over small talk. And I’ll fall in love again. Armie and I will always be a phone call and a plane ride away from each other. But maybe, just maybe, it’ll be a call that’s never dialed, and a plane that never takes off.

And maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But I won’t give away the end of what happens to us; that’s the one thing that stays mine.

 


End file.
